


When Harry met Eggsy

by inusagi



Series: Hartwin Week [1]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: 5 + 1 Things, Amnesia, First Time, Hartwin Week, M/M, i was going for sad with a happy ending, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 09:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4601601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inusagi/pseuds/inusagi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Harry met Eggsy. </p><p>Day 1: Hartwin week "First Time"</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Harry met Eggsy

**Author's Note:**

> Well, whoops. I'm running a bit behind on the whole Hartwin week thing. I'm gonna work on it all day--My son starts kindergarten in...oh, about 4 hours, so I'm totally going to be using Hartwin Week to stave off an existential crisis. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> [](http://statcounter.com/)

 

The first time he met Gary Unwin, he was five years old. The boy was silent—sombre, even—from his spot on the floor. Harry watched his endearingly pudgy fingers as they shook the snow globe. The motion was idle at best. He could tell the boy wasn’t paying attention to the soft white powder drifting within the glass.

Gary’s little brow was furrowed, anxious and confused by his mother’s mournful tears and Harry’s unusual appearance in their small flat.

It occurred to him that Gary wouldn’t understand, not really. He was far too young to truly comprehend such an abstract, permanent concept. And, if one faced facts, he was unlikely to see much difference in his day-to-day life, aside from his mother’s upset.

Lee had been in training at Kingsman for a year, during which time his contact with the outside world was severely limited. Prior to that, he’d been abroad to Bosnia and Kosovo with the Royal Marines.

Harry wondered if the boy knew his father at all, really. Guilt prickled his conscious, much more than it had in the face of the widow’s tears. In the 24 hours they’d spent together after Lee had passed the loyalty test, he’d confessed that he chose Kingsman over the Marines in hopes that he’d have more time to spend with his son. Lee spoke of the things he’d missed in the name of Queen and country—the boy’s birth, even, but also his first steps, first words, a four month phase in which he’d eat nothing but beans on toast and Jaffa Cakes. Lee wanted to make up for lost time, to coach the junior football matches, to help the boy study for his GSCEs and watch him struggle with his first crush on a pretty girl.

Lee had been robbed of the chance to watch his son grow up. Gary had been robbed of—well, a hell of a lot of things, really, and all of them down to Harry. He’d committed the gravest of transgressions a spy could make. The sin of carelessness was as unforgivable as it was fatal. He knew, stepping from the grieving wife towards her morose son, that he’d have to live with this for the rest of his life.

He knelt down. “What’s your name, young man?”

“Eggsy,” the boy lisped.

“Hello, Eggsy.”

Eggsy didn’t reply, instead refocusing on the snow globe.

“Can I see that?”

The boy nodded, wide-eyed and earnest, before handing Harry his treasure. Harry smiled his thanks and gently swirled the **tchotchke, showing how to create a windy snowfall within the orb, rather than the frantic blizzard caused by the jerky shakes of a child. He held up the Kingsman medal and waited for the boy’s attention to shift from the swirling false snow to the pink-and-gold trinket.**

“You take care of this, Eggsy,” he said. “Alright?”

Eggsy nodded, and a choked sob drew their attention back towards Mrs Unwin.

“Take care of your mum, too.”

Harry found himself grasping Eggsy’s small arm in what he meant to be a comforting gesture but felt stiflingly awkward instead, before taking his leave.

He spared one last glance at the boy, who was studying the medal’s inscription as though it could tell him all the secrets of the universe and not just the date his father died. He’d seen that exact expression—that intense, focused curiosity—on Lee’s face an uncountable number of times during the Lancelot trials.

Harry took a steadying breath and walked out into the night in search of a stiff drink.

Or twelve.

☂Ⓚ☂

The first time he met Eggsy, Harry’s mind was a blank slate. He didn’t know where he was— _who_ he was, even. He didn’t know why he was laying in a hospital bed or why he had so many wires and tubes attached to his person. He didn’t know why he felt so humiliatingly frail or what caused the pain radiating from his skull.

The most frustrating piece missing from the whole shoddy puzzle, however, was that he didn’t know the young man asleep at his bedside.

He knew he should press the glaring red button with the cartoon nurse that was considerately left within his reach, but he was loathe to wake the boy. He wanted to pretend that it was out of concern, for anyone tired enough to sleep in a plastic hospital chair certainly deserved to remain asleep, but he couldn’t lie to himself. He didn’t want to lose his chance to observe unnoticed.

The boy’s head was dangling backwards almost grotesquely, like a marionette with its strings cut. The angle emphasized the shadowy dusting of facial hair. His mouth was open, his lips soft and pink except the nasty-looking cut marring his bottom lip. His hair was dishevelled and...not quite dirty, no, but had the stiff, vaguely spiky appearance of product that needed washing out.

He was wearing a suit, this handsome boy. It was navy with white pinstripe—obviously expensive and well-tailored, but wrinkled and dirty all the same. His tie was bizarrely slashed in half. Why would the boy bother to keep it on, when it was so obviously ruined?

In his confusion and his frustration, he must have made a noise. The boy woke suddenly, glancing briefly at him and looking dazedly at the clock before his brain caught up with him. The double-take was amusing and the look of unrestrained joy on the young man’s face made something flutter in his stomach.

“ _Harry_.”

☂Ⓚ☂

The first time he met Eggsy, Harry had been studying his own reflection in the mirror above the sink. The fluorescent lighting in his en suite was not at all kind.

He saw an old man in the mirror, wrinkled and weary. He saw the beginning of jowls, the laugh lines and crow’s feet. He saw the grey hair creeping in at his temples.

He saw the scars.

The silvery starburst on his brow nauseated him in the way it caught the too-bright light. The straight, surgical scar at his hairline was flanked with the tell-tale pinpricks where stitches once were. It was a bit too reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster for Harry’s tastes.

What he needed, Harry decided, was better lighting. Perhaps soft, flickering candlelight to add a suave air of the mysterious to his features, or even a bit of forgiving moonlight to lend him a bit of a romantic filter.

Admittedly, he was unlikely to get either of those in this hell hole. His friend—at least, the man _claimed_ they were life-long friends. Harry really had no way of knowing—Merlin insisted that it was a world-renowned rehabilitation facility that specialized in working around traumatic brain injuries in their physiotherapy techniques.

Harry was fairly certain that it was a care home, plain and simple.

Grumbling to himself about not being old enough for a bloody care home, he manoeuvred his Zimmer frame through the door and walked slowly but steadily into his room.

The short trip left him exhausted. He’d only recently started walking again, and his damned feet struggled to even shuffle the short distance. Harry desperately wanted his bed.

Only...his bed was currently occupied by a handsome young man dressed in jeans and a yellow hooded pullover...and did his trainers have _wings_ on them?

The man was as casual as could be, sprawled on Harry’s bed as he was, popping grapes into his mouth from a bag on his lap. He gave Harry a little wave with his grape-stuffed fist.

“A-are you hear for the physio?”

He certainly hoped not. Harry didn’t think he could bear it, exhausted as he was.

The boy swallowed and gave him a cheeky little wink. “Oh, is that what we’re callin’ it now?”

Harry opted not to dignify that _completely unprofessional behaviour_ with a response. He simply stared the boy down, hoping that his trembling legs and the white-knuckle grip he had on his Zimmer frame didn’t undermine the intimidation he was trying to telegraph.

He needn’t have worried, as it turned out. It was a little _too_ efficient. The boy seemed to crumple in on himself—His shoulders slumped, and his flirty little smirk fell into a look of absolute heartbreak. When he spoke, his voice was flat, resigned.

“You have no idea who I am.”

☂Ⓚ☂

The first time he met Eggsy, they were in bed. The morning light filtered in from the window and shone on the sleeping man’s alabaster skin as though Heaven itself wanted to caress it.

Harry had no idea how he got here, but he knew what people said about gift horses.

The young man was radiant, sprawled out on his stomach as he was. His sleeping, relaxed face was turned toward Harry, too young and too beautiful. The sheet covering them had obviously edged down while they slept until it was only wrapped around the leg that was wrapped around Harry’s.

Harry was tracing the indentation of his lover’s spine before he realized his hand had even moved. He quickly became lost in the soul-deep perfection of touching the sleeping man and the absolute marvel at how _happy_ he was simply to caress for the sake of touching, rather than arousing, how content he was to ask his questions by pressing his fingers feather-light into letter patterns there on the man’s back, rather than waking him up and demanding answers.

w h o a r e y o u ? w h o a m i ? a r e y o u m i n e?

He let his hands wander to the man’s flank, his side, his lovely derriere. He fit his fingers perfectly into the small bruises peppering narrow hips, the deep purple vibrant against his pale skin and wondered what he’d done in life that the universe rewarded him with such a beautiful creature in his bed.

The young man shifted, arching into his touch like an affectionate cat, and blinked the sleep out of his eyes.

“’Arry?”

He—Harry, it must be—said nothing. He didn’t want to talk, didn’t want the terrifying reality to come crashing down on them. He wanted to stay in his warm cocoon of red bed sheets and beautiful bed partners.

His lover was fully awake now, searching Harry’s face with frantic blue-green eyes, though for what, Harry couldn’t guess.

“Oh,” the man breathed, tears welling up. “Not again. Not now.”

☂Ⓚ☂

The first time he met Eggsy, Harry was well on his way to getting pissed.

It had been a truly shitty couple of days. He’d awoken yesterday morning from a nightmare that he couldn’t quite describe to find that he couldn’t remember a thing.

Or perhaps he hadn’t woken up at all and was still trapped in his nightmare.

He’d ransacked the house looking for answers, but only found a wallet by the door with his driving licence, which declared him to be Harry Hart and told him his birthday. He didn’t even find a drinks trolley or a handful of bottles of ale in the icebox.

Which, of course, brought him to the pub down the road from his house. He’d been sat at the bar for going on two hours and was on his fourth Guinness when the boy walked in.

It was impossible not to notice him, at least for Harry. Dressed in a beautiful black suit, he stood out in the pub as much as a single ray of sunlight would stand out in a dense, dark forest.

He watched as the newcomer spoke to the barkeep in hushed voices, both of them occasionally glancing over at Harry. The young man fished his wallet from his breast pocket, withdrew two hundred pound notes, and passed them to the bar keep with a firm handshake and a grateful smile.

As he watched the boy come towards him, Harry realized that he _knew_ him, somehow. The name was on the tip of his tongue, just refusing to materialize.

The young man took the barstool next to him with a groan. He plucked Harry’s pint from his fingers and brought it to his own lips.

“That’s my shirt.”

Whatever Harry had expected the young man to say, that hadn’t been it. “I beg your pardon?”

“That shirt you’re wearing,” he said, nodding to it. “It’s mine. I s’pose I should start labelling the drawers, but I’ve always liked how you look in my threads. That an’ I’m half-worried you’ll end up wearing ‘em anyway _and_ think that _you’re_ the one called Eggsy.”

“Eggsy?” What a ridiculous name. He surely would never think it was his.

Would he?

“Tha’s me,” came the obvious reply. “An’ you’re Harry Hart, if you haven’t worked it out yet. We live together—Have done for nearly two years now.”

The boy—Eggsy—took another drink of Harry’s pint and continued.

“You had an accident, few years ago, an’ sometimes you forget everything. The first couple o’ times, you was having a stroke, but now the doctors ain’t got no idea why. But it’s happenin’ less an’ less now. “

He must have had a horrified look on his face, because Eggsy smiled and squeezed his knee. “It’s been eight months since you started all over again—the longest yet. You’re gettin’ better, love.”

Eggsy got to his feet and pulled Harry to his. “I hate to rush you, you know I do, but I’m wheels up to Lebanon in an hour and we’ve gotta get home before Merlin beats us there. He stays with you when I’m away for more than a couple o’ days. Might haveta change that, though, after this.”

The last bit was muttered, obviously talking to himself, but he looked at Harry seriously and his green-blue eyes seemed much older than the rest of him. “I was so scared when I got home and you weren’t there.”

☂Ⓚ☂

The first time he met Galahad, Harry was sitting in Merlin’s chair. Eggsy had landed only a short time ago and was checking in for his debrief. Harry had watched the mission, silently, and had never felt more proud.

He’d known, from the beginning, that Eggsy had the potential to be one of the finest Kingsman agents ever produced and he’d been right.

Harry couldn’t wait to tell him.

His memory had returned—all of it, from both before his injury and of these hazy, broken three years since—one night, very suddenly. He was stirring honey into his tea and had the mad, errant thought that his Nan would be so cross if she could see him now. He thought of her obsessively stacked sugar cubes and the flood gates opened.

He wanted to cry with relief and scream with frustration, that he would regain his memory when Eggsy—his beautiful Eggsy, who’d loved and cared for Harry for years when Harry could give him nothing in return that couldn’t be snatched away at any moment—was still in Beirut for three weeks.

Eggsy had left thinking Harry didn’t remember him at all—and, indeed, when he’d left, Harry had only felt a vague, barely-there feeling of familiarity. Eggsy had seemed so miserable when he left, so worried and downtrodden that even without knowing who he was—how _special_ he was—Harry had wanted to gather him up in his arms and rock the young man like an infant until he was happy again.

And now—now that Eggsy had taken out one of the deadliest terror cells in the world—a group of American mercenaries attempting to turn up the heat on the waning wars to launch World War III—now that Eggsy was coming home safe, Harry intended to pour all the love and pride and gratitude in the world into that boy.

Harry sat very still as the door opened and watched, amused, as Eggsy’s expression turned from surprise to confusion.

“Welcome home, Eggsy.”


End file.
